Expert Insights: 2026 Advanced Therapies Report Highlights Shift From Hospitals to Community Care

In an interview with Pharmacy Times, Fran Gregory, PharmD, vice president of emerging therapies at Cardinal Health, discussed the company’s 2026 Advanced Therapies Report, which highlights growing support for moving advanced therapy administration from inpatient hospitals into community and outpatient settings. She explained that expanding access closer to home can reduce travel burdens, long hospital stays, and other barriers patients often face when seeking treatment at academic medical centers. Gregory noted that community practices may need 1 to 2 years to prepare for advanced therapy administration due to staffing, operational, financial, and safety requirements, including hospital partnerships. She emphasized that practices should first evaluate their patient populations to determine whether investing in advanced therapy capabilities aligns with current or future treatment needs.

Pharmacy Times: Can you tell us about the 2026 Advanced Therapies Report—what it covers and what prompted Cardinal Health to release it?

Fran Gregory, PharmD: This is our second annual Advanced Therapy report. The report this year draws on perspectives from more than 160 physicians and administrators across community practice settings, health systems, as well as expert commentary and a patient case study illustrating the real-world impact of outpatient advanced therapy administration. So we have a really great data set in this year's advanced therapy report, which we're really excited to share.

The report underscores that advanced therapies are moving beyond inpatient hospitals, where providers are increasingly supporting relationships that bring these life-changing treatments closer to patients' homes, which is in the community care setting. This is really the crux of the report.

You asked what prompted us to focus on this topic this year, with community providers being central. It really is because of the strong provider support for expanding advanced therapy administration into that outpatient and community-based setting. You’ll see in the report that [many] of the data reflect the desire for community providers to be involved with these treatments, and there's broad agreement that partnerships between health systems and community practices are critical to ensuring safe, high-quality patient care.

We know, and we've heard this before, and we’ll talk about it in the report in depth, that there is significant operational, clinical, and economic planning required to establish the level of care that these advanced therapy programs require. We really want to expand the knowledge and comfortability of these community provider settings to be able to provide these treatments to patients more often.

There’s also a growing opportunity to improve patient access, and that's really what we're focused on at Cardinal Health: What can we do to improve patient access to advanced therapies? This growing opportunity really requires experience, and we want to help these community providers develop this experience, knowledge, and confidence to either start delivering these life-changing therapies to patients or feel more comfortable increasing the current number of patients they are treating.

Advanced therapies, including bispecific cell and gene therapies, are delivering life-changing treatment options to patients. There are currently 61 approved products on the market, and we expect that to grow to around 180 treatments approved by the year 2030. Oncology is currently the dominant therapeutic area, with almost half of the treatments currently approved, and in the future, the focus will be on oncology plus hematology. However, additional therapeutic areas present increased opportunities, although [they pose] challenges for community providers.

Of the approved advanced therapies in oncology, the majority of administrations currently occur within the inpatient setting, and most are in academic medical centers and large health systems. But there is a significant push from not only manufacturers but providers, very broadly, to be able to administer advanced therapies in alternative settings, such as outpatient or community practices. We know this will improve patient access to care.

Many of these patients who currently only have the option to obtain these treatments at an academic medical center may not have the ability to travel there. That medical center may be hours away, require long hospital stays, or long stays close to the hospital that can be very inconvenient and costly for the patient. So we really wanted to focus this report on providing data points that will reassure providers, payers, and patients that administration across a broader spectrum of health care provider types is really the best thing that we can do for patient access.

Pharmacy Times: The report found it can take community practices up to 2 years to prepare to administer advanced therapies. What is driving that timeline?

Gregory: Many community practice professionals who have established advanced therapy within their practices have done so in response to a patient need, so a physician [has] a patient right in front of them who they know would benefit most from an advanced therapy. They acknowledge that launching these programs is difficult and demands extensive preparation, but they also know that it's the best for the patient.

Many community practice professionals who have established advanced therapies have taken quite a bit of time to do so. Some providers have taken maybe a year, maybe longer. However, we have seen some providers recently really accelerating those timelines. We want to partner with providers to ensure that while we want more providers to have access to these treatments, we also want to make sure that's done in the safest and most effective way to benefit patients most.

Our survey data support this move into the community. Nearly half the respondents, at 48%, spent 1 to 2 years getting ready to administer advanced therapies. This highlights that there are a number of processes, procedures, and staffing needs that must be set up in order to prepare to administer these treatments.

Driving factors to this timeline include establishing the right team structure and support for patients, developing internal guidelines, policies, and procedures around administration and monitoring of advanced therapies. Really important is understanding the patient journey and circumstances, meeting patient needs, and adopting new therapies.

Many providers are currently evaluating their patient population. Knowing that they are treating a certain cancer type at high numbers, it is very clear to some of these providers that they need to be able to offer all treatments available on the market to their patients with specific conditions and indications. Providers are really facing these treatments in a very positive and eager manner, wanting to be part of the health care system that is able to administer these treatments to patients.

They also need to streamline operational capacity, and part of this is having a strong partnership with a hospital. It is fundamental to ensuring patient safety that there’s a triage process for patients who might have significant adverse events or need to be seen by a higher level of care in a hospital setting.

The majority of our community survey respondents, at 56%, said they have an existing partnership with a hospital to support advanced therapies. Among those without a partnership, almost 60% indicated that the lack of partnership creates a significant challenge to providing these advanced therapies. We know those partnerships are a significant part of not only operational preparation but also clinical preparation to make sure that these patients are very well taken care of.

So those are just a few of the statistics from the report that I highlighted, but I can’t reiterate enough that it’s clear community providers do want to be a part of the advanced therapy world.

Pharmacy Times: The report highlights strong provider support for community expansion—are you surprised by that level of momentum, and what is fueling it?

Gregory: I’m absolutely not surprised by that level of momentum. We’ve been hearing this for a number of years. If you just think about doing the right thing for the patient, these providers absolutely want to do that. When there’s a treatment out there that we know a patient needs or could benefit from, every physician wants to do the right thing and offer that treatment.

I think increasing patient access is important to all providers, so we really want to equip these practices with the resources to support that community expansion. It's ultimately positive for patients in ensuring they can receive the best care for them closer to home and that there's a support system in place that can help that patient get the most out of their treatment.

Looking back, when we think about the advanced therapy pipeline and these treatments in general, it almost reminds me of that first wave of specialty treatments in the 1990s and early 2000s. These therapies were revolutionary at the time and included treatments for multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and others. Providers were a little scared at that time. Patients weren't familiar with this type of science, and neither were physicians. But those physicians quickly learned that these were the best options for patients, and they supported these treatments quickly after they started being demanded by patients, manufacturer education, and the recognition that there were better treatment options available.

So this is reminiscent of those times where we have a little hesitation in the market. But I think we're at that turning point where physicians, manufacturers, and providers of all kinds are really advocating that the best way for patients to get access to these treatments is closer to home, and that we all can work together to make that happen.

Pharmacy Times: What is the most actionable finding from the report for a community practice that is just beginning to explore advanced therapy administration?

Gregory: I think going back to evaluating their patient data, looking at what types of patients they are treating today, and what those patients' treatments look like. Are there opportunities in their patient population for some of these advanced therapies? If they really aren’t seeing patients who need or could benefit from these treatments, it might not necessarily make sense for them to focus a year of their time on gearing up.

However, if these physicians are realizing that their patients could benefit from an Advanced Therapy, those are the physicians we want to work with to ensure that they have the appropriate staffing, clinical support, and operational and financial pieces in place to help them gear up to support advanced therapies.

There are a variety of different provider types, and everyone is focused on their patients and what's best for those patients. If it turns out in their data, patient population, and expertise that there’s an advanced therapy either currently available or, very importantly, in the pipeline for their patient type, it’s the right time for them to get involved.